Metro areas increasingly dominated by single insurance companies

CHICAGO — In an analysis of competition in health insurance markets across the United States, a study conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) found that in 169 of 389 metropolitan areas (43 percent), a single health insurer had at least a 50 percent share of the market. This represents an eight percent increase in such markets over just two years. The finding comes from the newly released 2017 edition of the AMA’s Competition in Health Insurance: A Comprehensive Study of U.S. Markets, which examines market concentration in 2016.